In a public statement issued today (see below), members of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee demanded a prompt response from the former Chairman and Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission regarding Former FBI Language Specialist Behrooz Sarshar’s censored testimony to the Commission. The press release was prompted by recently released documents related to the interviews conducted by the 9/11 Commission published at Cryptome.org, in particular the “Memorandum for the Record” containing the Commission’s interview with Mr. Sarshar. The memorandum, after establishing Mr. Sarshar’s credibility and vaguely referring to his documented and witnessed testimony regarding specific tip(s) provided to the FBI in April and June 2001 regarding planned imminent “Kamikaze Pilots” attacks targeting major cities in the United States, leaves out the entire testimony. This testimony was also entirely left out of the Commission’s final report released in July 2004.

Behrooz Sarshar worked as a GS 12 language specialist with Top Secret Clearance at the FBI Washington Field Office. After leaving the FBI in 2002, he provided his testimony on “Kamikaze Pilots” to several Congressional offices and investigators, including staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Committee’s leading Democrat at the time, Senator Patrick Leahy, and the Justice Department’s Inspector General Office. The congressional sources familiar with Mr. Sarshar’s case and briefing found him and his report credible:

A former Grassley investigator says he found Sarshar credible, too. “We thought he was a pretty credible guy,” said former Senate Judiciary Committee investigator Kris Kolesnik.

In April and June of 2001 a long-term FBI informant told two FBI agents from the Washington field office that his sources in Afghanistan had provided him with information regarding a terrorist plot to attack the US in a suicide mission involving airplanes. Mr. Sarshar acted as an interpreter at both meetings after which the case agents filed a report (on 302 Forms) with their squad supervisor, Thomas Frields. Here is what Mr. Frields told the reporter when questioned about the case:

At Project Censored, we examine the coverage of news and information important to the maintenance of a healthy and functioning democracy. We define Modern Censorship as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets. On a daily basis, censorship refers to the intentional non-inclusion of a news story – or piece of a news story – based on anything other than a desire to tell the truth. Such manipulation can take the form of political pressure (from government officials and powerful individuals), economic pressure (from advertisers and funders), and legal pressure (the threat of lawsuits from deep-pocket individuals, corporations, and institutions).

WHAT IS MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY

In our view, the only valid justification for declining a news story is that in a medium limited by time and space, another news story was simply more important to the people of the community, whether local, national or international. While admittedly a subjective process, it is, nonetheless, a process to be undertaken by the news people themselves (the investigative journalists and editors), NOT by the managers and CEOs of their “parent company.” No professional journalist or researcher should ever have to face the destruction of his or her career (or life) simply because they wanted to tell the truth. While no two people will always agree on what story is more important than another, a system where the working reporters and editors run the newsroom would at least provide a fertile environment for debate, dissent and critical thinking.

Arguing that a Pentagon order banning four journalists from covering military commissions at Guantanamo Bay was illegal and unconstitutional, The Miami Herald and two Canadian news outlets appealed on Wednesday.

While covering a hearing last week to determine the admissibility of confessions made by Canadian detainee Omar Khadr, four journalists from The Herald, which is owned by McClatchy, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and Can-West Newspapers of Canada printed the name of a witness who had been identified at the hearing as “Interrogator No. 1.” The witness, Joshua Claus, had been convicted by a U.S. military jury of detainee abuse in 2005 and sentenced to five months in prison. His role as Khadr’s interrogator had been known since 2008, when it was first revealed by a judge at Guantanamo. He later gave an on-the-record interview to the Toronto Star.

“The public is deprived of the very skilled reporting of journalists who have been covering this story for a long time,” she said.

A story from McClatchy Newspapers, which owns the Miami Herald, said Rosenberg has covered every military commission hearing at Guantanamo Bay, with the exception of one week, since the proceedings began in 2004.

I found this the other day browsing around but unfortunately I cannot open or download the file. I am hoping someone out there has an account with this group Palgrave Connect. All the chapter contents seem to be very interesting. I somehow get the feeling the issue will say basically that the means will justify the end. See comments below.

The Impact of 9-11: The New Legal Landscape is the third volume of the six-volume series The Day that Changed Everything? edited by Matthew J. Morgan. The series brings together from a broad spectrum of disciplines the leading thinkers of our time to reflect on one of the most significant events of our time. With a foreword by the former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Senator Bob Graham, the volume’s contributors include Alan Dershowitz, Aziz Huq, William Weaver, and other leading scholars.

THE EMPIRE, POWER, AND PROPAGANDA LECTURE SERIES: An evening with Project Censored. Please join the co-editors of Censored 2010, Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, for a public talk and discussion on the ongoing Truth Emergency and media censorship in the US.

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, please support these speakers by attending in Person: Thursday, April 22, 2010 — 7:00pm Pacific — Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar at Bonita, Berkeley, CA

From Project Censored article “State Crimes Against Democracy”
by Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff:
“New research in the journal American Behavioral Scientist (Sage publications, February 2010) addresses the concept of ‘State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD). Professor Lance deHaven-Smith from Florida State University writes that SCADs involve highlevel government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities for political advantages and power. Proven SCADs since World War II include McCarthyism (fabrication of evidence of a communist infiltration), Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (President Johnson and Robert McNamara falsely claimed North Vietnam attacked a US ship), burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in effort to discredit Ellsberg, the Watergate break-in, Iran-Contra, Florida’s 2000 Election (felon disenfranchisement program), and fixed intelligence on WMDs to justify the Iraq War…Credible scientific evidence brings into question the possibility that some aspects of the events of 9/11 involved State Crimes Against Democracy. Psychologically this is a very hard concept for Americans to even consider. However, ignoring the issue in the context of multiple proven SCADs since World War II seems far more dangerous for democracy than the consequences of future scientific inquiry and transparent, fact-based investigative reporting.”